I would have hired you if I did not know your name

It fascinates me to attend face-to-face interviews with clients who meet candidates we introduce them. Personal profile and a completed practical task are the only information they know about a person who will enter the room in few minutes. Just before candidate interviewed for a Client Solution Engineer position enters, I ask employer to describe me a portrait of a person looking just at his profile.

“Male, 35yo, probably 10–12 years of experience, mainly within big companies” — the answer I get and ask a candidate to enter. That face of the employer when he sees a 22yo, red-haired girl entering a room is priceless and becomes a moment, which inspires me most.

“If she went through a traditional recruitment process, she probably would have never reached a stage of an interview with me” — the employer tells me after he made her a job offer and two of us remain in the room.

Every candidate thinks that his education, qualifications, previous work experience and references matter when future employer is making decision to invite them for an interview. Indeed, this was a standard set of information every recruiter was operating with when staffing a position for many years.

In the modern world businesses change rapidly and new, faster and more technologically advanced recruitment solutions are coming into place. With the help of latest technology recruiters use broader set of data, create more complex and accurate candidate’s profiles but still justify refusals with a ‘no fit’ reason.

What does this ‘no fit’ means usually depends on the personal subjective opinion of the decision-maker. It can be doubt in competence, corporate culture or anything else, which usually remains a mystery for the candidate. No matter how many times employer says they have a fair, bias-free hiring process, candidates are uncomfortably aware that it just isn’t true.

It’s human nature: knowing what someone looks like, what their name is, where they live or what education they’ve had will affect how they’re viewed and evaluated by future employer. Many employers are aware that they are probably losing out on some fantastic candidates as a result of having this information early on in the hiring process, so PitchMe decided to make some changes.

An innovative skills-based talent marketplace was introduced where the recruitment process is anonymous and none of personal details are passed to employers until skills, expertise, psychological profile and practical task are assessed. By doing things in this order and by utilising latest technology, personal information became almost irrelevant. (Also, of course, it’s much fairer on anyone who’s applying for a job).

Integrating anonymity as part of the hiring process helped our clients to find some excellent talent beyond traditional fields of search across a variety of roles including Client Engineer, Software Developer and Brand Manager. Even though our recruitment strategy focuses on skills, personal goals and psychological profiling over demographics, one of the business owners mentioned that new employees ‘fit right’ in and get along with everyone else brilliantly:

“they help make our culture rather than try to conform to a prescribed, inflexible one.”